Mac users (only, I'm afraid) might be interested in this intriguing little app I've only recently discovered: Ghostnote. It's a sticky-note app (yawn) - with a difference, in that it remembers the context of each note automatically. You can attach notes to documents, folders, applications and even websites. Oh, and it supports rich text, which is always nice.

The contextual thing is where it's all heading, folks! That's where data management should now be focused, but everybody's being very, very slow to get there. To the frustration of us CRIMPers. However, Ghostnote is not expensive, and appears (I've only just installed it) to work pretty well.

Sorry, meant to provide a link to the website: http://www.ghostnoteapp.com

Thanks Bill - signed in, downloaded and launched. (I was looking for something exactly like this about six months ago, with a vague memory that such an application existed, possibly during my Windows days. But then I never found it.)

A cheap thrill for $4.99 -- thanks Bill. From the developer's FAQ it looks like the best is yet to come -- searchable, exportable notes, more than one note per app/file/folder. I think for now the notes are locked into the Application Support folder somewhere. GhostNotes has a bit a a problem with Spaces too -- but Spaces messes with lots of apps so that's not unusual.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Sorry, meant to provide a link to the website:
http://www.ghostnoteapp.com

I'm glad to see they're working on a Windows version.

I started a thread a while back about ideas for marking web pages as "done" when you've taken notes or downloaded the info on that page. This is a persistent problem for me because I'm continuously collecting articles on a variety of topics. How do I know whether I already have that info? Is that something I captured last year? Who knows. It would be a great solution if I could attach a sticky note that would pop up every time a web page loads.

Wayne

Wayne K wrote:

it
would be a great solution if I could attach a sticky note that would pop
up every time a web page loads.

GumNotes claims to be able to do that (though it was a while ago I tried it, so not sure how well that really works):

http://www.gumnotes.com/

I seem to recall that at one point Google had a feature that would allow people to attach notes and comments to browsed URLs ... and when you loaded the page, a sidebar would also load that would contain your notes, and those of other users too. I can't remember what they called it, but it didn't catch on and it was dropped.

Thanks, I'm trying it right now. So far, it appears to work correctly. With any of these programs the question is whether it's going to work with thousands of web pages spread of years of usage. I'm going to keep using this one for a while and also try Ghostnotes if they issue the Windows version.


Dr Andus wrote:

GumNotes claims to be able to do that (though it was a while ago I tried
it, so not sure how well that really works):

http://www.gumnotes.com/

Many post-it note software can do this. Here is a good free one: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/ that has that capability.

There is another Mac app in the App Store similar to GhostNotes -- AntNotes. It supports note export (to rich text or plain -- so a note could be written with Markdown), which doesn't seem possible in GhostNote. Doesn't support attaching notes to files, but will attach notes to apps. And -- it's $2 cheaper! WooHoo!